Extra-Marital and Harassment Allegations Did In The Cain Campaign Pure & Simple

Supporters of Herman Cain have tried to explain away the implosion of his campaign to a variety of factors, including him being an outsider whose campaign was understaffed, but it should be obvious to anyone with elementary math skills that Cain’s problems began with and his campaign ended over allegations of an extra-marital affair and incidents of sexual harassment that became more credible as his denials became more incredible.

Nate Silver, who established himself as the preeminent analyst of polls and voting trends in 2008, writes in a blog post titled “Other Than That, Mr. Cain, How Was the Campaign?” at The New York Times Cain’s polls were headed on a sharp upward trajectory until October 31, when Politico first reported on accusations that he had sexually harassed two women. They then reversed course and embarked upon an equally sharp downward trajectory.

“It is not a whole lot more complicated than that,” Silver writes. “It is possible — I would say somewhat likely — that Mr. Cain’s polls were liable to decline even in the absence of the scandal.”

The problem, Silver says, is that the scandal intervened, Cain’s polling took a Big 180, and that makes coming to any conclusions about other factors extremely dubious.

“Some of the write-ups about Mr. Cain’s campaign have only mentioned the allegations of sexual harassment and infidelity in passing,” Silver concludes, “Which is a bit like asking ‘other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’ ”

But The Onion may have said it best with this headline:

RUMORS OF EXTRAMARITAL AFFAIR END CAMPAIGN
OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WHO DIDN’T KNOW
CHINA HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS